Veeam Software brought its VeeamON Tour 2022 event in Johannesburg, with the theme of ‘Transform your Modern Data Protection Strategy’.
Chris Norton, Regional Director for Africa at Veeam, discussed pertinent South African developments in the opening keynote, followed by Michael Cade, Senior Global Technologist: Product Strategy at Veeam, who presented the main technical keynote address of the event. Lisa Strydom, Senior Manager: Channel & Alliances for Africa at Veeam, presented the Women in Technology breakfast session. The company also outlined its exciting vision on Modern Data Protection in cloud, virtual, physical, SaaS, and Kubernetes environments.
“The global pandemic has amplified the security challenges facing businesses through an increase in remote working and cloud usage. Only a small percentage of South African organisations have data certainty, while the vast majority are concerned that they are not protecting their data sufficiently and this is a major concern in an era where data is a company’s most important asset,” explains Norton. “At Veeam, we understand the power of hybrid IT and the multi-cloud universe and we have built solutions that enable organisations to protect, own and control their data across any cloud. We are committed to ensuring that we support our customers in South Africa and further afield on the African Continent to advance and expand their business operations with confidence.”
Company Milestones
Presenting Veeam’s strategy and vision for 2022, Norton shared key company successes from the last financial year.
- Veeam enjoyed a record FY21, reporting 27% ARR growth YoY, with Veeam Backup for Microsoft 365 business growing faster than expected with 73% YoY growth and Veeam Availability Suite growing over 36% YoY. This success has continued during Q1 2022, with Veeam reporting 25% ARR growth YoY, and a 78% increase YoY across its subscription business.
- Thanks to such consistent performance, Veeam is the tied number one provider worldwide during 2H’21 in IDC’s worldwide data replication and protection (DR&P) market. In the latest IDC Semi-annual Software Tracker, 2H’21, Veeam had the fastest revenue growth in the DR&P market among the top five vendors, all other vendors combined, and overall market average. In fact, Veeam’s YoY growth was more than double its nearest named top five competitors in the market.
Thought Leadership
One of the main concerns for companies around the world is the rising threat of ransomware. According to the inaugural Veeam Ransomware Trends Report 2022, 72% of organisations worldwide suffered partial or complete attacks on their backup repositories, which dramatically impacted their ability to recover data without paying the ransom. Of firms who paid the ransom, 52% could recover data, but 24% were still unable to, revealing a one in three chance that paying the ransom still leads to no data. Only 19% of organizations did not pay the ransom, as they could recover their data.
David McMurdo, the Territory Sales Manager of multinational tiered backup storage company ExaGrid Systems, hosted a session in which discussed how his organisation uses Veeam technology for ransomware recovery.
Product Innovation
With more than 850,000 downloads of Veeam Backup & Replication v11, Veeam has continued the innovation and development of its expansive feature set with the highly anticipated Veeam Backup & Replication v12. It was showcased at VeeamON Tour, alongside cloud-native solutions (for AWS, Azure and Google Cloud) and SaaS offerings (Microsoft 365 and Salesforce). Furthermore, Veeam showed the deeper integration of Kasten by Veeam K10 for Kubernetes at the event.
Michael Cade, who delivered the technical keynote address of the day, says: “It is important to note that Kubernetes is not only applicable for software developers, but it also affects infrastructure and operational teams within an organisation, furthermore the growing DevOps focused teams and companies will require new skillsets to provide their environments with automation and the ability to support these new platforms. Kubernetes is further accelerated by the shifts in the traditional workplace brought about by the global pandemic, and we will continue to see this trend growing in the near future.
Furthermore, organisations should bear in mind that data backup is only part of the problem, and having a solution for efficient restoration is a very important part of the process. Hence the need for products such as Veeam Backup & Replication v12 is clear. Our intention at Veeam is to offer our customers even more capabilities in the focus areas of cloud, security, and containers. This will give them better protection and even faster recovery from cyber threats, greater flexibility for additional application support, and facilitate the innovations that deliver easier, more efficient operations., All of which benefits businesses and their customers alike”.
With over 11 million users under paid contract, Veeam is the Microsoft 365 backup market leader, and the new version, Veeam Backup for Microsoft 365 v7, expected later this year, will include enterprise-grade monitoring and reporting capabilities, helping to keep systems and infrastructure running smoothly thanks to built-in intelligence.
Also coming soon is Veeam Backup for Salesforce, a much sought-after addition to Veeam’s SaaS portfolio. With the ability to back up in the cloud and on-premises, the new offering eliminates the risk of losing Salesforce data and metadata.